2014 Midterm Election Results: a Silver Lining
Looking for a silver lining in this year's abortional midterm election results is kind of like a newly homeless person saying “Cool! No more mortgage payments; no more of those obnoxious neighborhood kids cutting across my lawn.”
And on that note:
Ballot initiatives to increase the minimum wage were approved by voters in South Dakota, Arkansas and Nebraska.
Voters in Oregon and Washington D.C. have approved the legalization of recreational marijuana.
A “Personhood” amendment (“life begins at ejaculation”) got trounced in Colorado.
The Worst Governor Ever — Tom Corbett, Pennsylvania's corporate-funded teabag-sucking skank — has been voted out.
A gun control initiative — all it does is increase background checks — actually passed in Washington State. I'm pretty neutral about the whole gun thing, but it was refreshing to see the usual NRA talking points (“Dey gonna take away our guns!”) and obfuscation tactics (coming up with an innocuously-worded “rival” measure that would prohibit background checks) being ignored by voters.
Michigan voters rejected two initiatives that would have 1) allowed trophy hunting of wolves, and 2) authorized an unelected unaccountable committee of ranchers and trophy hunters to make all future decisions on which animals could be hunted, regardless of these animals' endangered or threatened status.
And don't get me started on Maine's inbred voters who apparently drool and ejaculate at the prospect of luring bears with piles of donuts and candy and then shooting them pointblank.
OOPS, this was supposed to be a positive post...
posted by Tom Harper @ 11:55 PM
13 Comments:
You really think Corbett was worse then Scott of Florida and Walker of Wisconsin?
Erik
Good try Tom and I for one appreciate the effort on your part, but... I am still depressed.
Erik: Maybe not worse, but with Pennsylvania being my home state, it really hits home that Pennsylvania was being taken over by the Far Right.
jadedj: I always try to look on the bright side, but with yesterday's election results it might be a lost cause.
"And don't get me started on Maine's inbred voters who apparently drool and ejaculate at the prospect of luring bears with piles of donuts and candy and then shooting them point blank."
That is positive, Tom, positively disgusting.
Re: Minimum Wage also in Arkansas as well. What does it say when those same states that raised the minimum raise elected Republicans to the Senate who not only hate the notion but will block it nationally?
Talk about a Contradiction!
In California is was raised in Oakland, and San Francisco which raised it higher then the recent State raise.
Erik
Maine's a weird state. I'm starting to think we should shove it down into the South.
Jerry: It gets even worse. Maine's state wildlife agencies spent huge amounts of taxpayer money to campaign against the ballot measure that would have forbidden some of the worst "hunting" tactics.
Erik: It does seem a little contradictory, voting for a higher minimum wage and simultaneously voting for Republican governors and senators who think a minimum wage = communism.
Jim: I like Maine a lot (haven't been there since the '70s), but yesterday's vote sure was disappointing. They re-elected their Godawful teatard governor and they rejected the ballot measure that would have protected bears to some small degree.
It IS hard to find any silver linings here... but there are some, as you noted, Tom.
I'm telling myself that as long as the President and Affordable Care can make it through the next two years relatively unscathed, voters will have a great chance to see what the GOP is really all about, and that it will set the turkeys up for getting crushed in two years. People are already tired of the "do-nothing Congress", and now they are going to have more evidence virtually shoved in their faces as to why nothing is getting done. (Of course the Republicans will try to spin this so that it looks like it's Obama's fault.)
Had we won enough races to keep Senate control, it might have actually set things up so that with an "unpopular" President (who I think is unlikely to increase his approval rating very much between now and the next election), the "anti-left" spin stuff might have gotten even worse.
We need to do our best during the next two years to make things painfully obvious as to what the GOP is doing. Right now, they talk like they're going to be in total control come 2016, but that certainly doesn't have to happen that way at all.
Let's get through the next two years. It will basically be nothing but horseshit, and it might even include an effort to impeach the President. Their hatred for him runs so deep it wouldn't surprise me if they tried. But I don't believe he is so unpopular that a majority of Americans would want to waste all the time and money on trying to drive him from office. So if they actually tried to go through with that, I think it would bite them, big-time.
Snave: I was sorry to hear the GMO labeling initiative got shot down in Oregon (just like in California and Washington). So far there seems to be no match for Monsanto's billion-dollar smear campaigns. Maybe that'll change someday.
I agree that if we were going to spend the next two years with a gridlocked Democratic Senate, the GOP would be in a better position to turn Obama and "Big Government" into campaign issues. I hope there's such a huge rift between all the presidential wannabes -- Cruz, Rubio, Paul, Jeb Bush, Christie, Walker and whoever else -- that the public will see what a bunch of complete phony assholes they all are.
I'd agree that it's a very mixed bag, from a very mixed up electorate. Nice discussion of the positive though. I do heartily agree that the minimum wage increases and pot legalization show movement in the right direction.
Karlo: "...a very mixed bag, from a very mixed up electorate." Well put. I hope that the general public's shifting views on the minimum wage, pot and gay rights will be a significant force in coming elections.
well we can always move to Detroit
I meant Chicago
six of one half a dozen of another
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